The Architecture of Display: Museums,Universities and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Hugo Victor , Quatrevingt-trieze (1874), Pt III, Bk VI, 475. Hugo was in fact contrasting the durability of a building, the family home, with the revolutionary idea symbolized in the guillotine. I am grateful to J. V. Field for drawing my attention to this oracular but nonetheless apposite remark.

See for example the recent survey of the literature by Finn Bernard S. , “The museum of science and technology”, in Shapiro M. (ed.), The museum: A reference guide (New York, 1990), 59–83.

Altick R. D. , The shows of London (Cambridge, Mass., 1978).

There are however numerous studies of individual institutions, or groups of institutions, as in Sheets-Pyenson Susan , Cathedrals of science: The development of colonial natural history museums during the late nineteenth century (Kingston and Montreal, 1988). For a general if rather Foucauldian account of museums, see Hooper-Greenhill Eilean , Museums and the shaping of knowledge (London, 1992). There is a helpful discussion of the links between museums and knowledge in Jordanova Ludmilla , “Objects of knowledge: A historical perspective on museums”, in Vergo P. (ed.), The new museology (London, 1989), 22–40.

Richard Phillips's appointment at the Yorkshire Museum is a well-known example; see Morrell J. and Thackray A. , Gentlemen of science: The early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1982), 39–41.

The most obvious example is of course the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons and the battles between radicals and the forces of conservatism in the person of Richard Owen: Desmond A. , The politics of evolution (Chicago, 1989).

Jevons W. Stanley , “The use and abuse of museums”, in Methods of social reform and other papers (London, 1883), 54–55.

The main general histories of the British Museum are by Crook J. M. , The British Museum (London, 1972), and Miller E. , That noble cabinet: A history of the British Museum (Ohio, 1974).

Report from the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the condition, management and affairs of the British Museum, 1835. A further Royal Commission was appointed in 1847 following a Memorial from the British Association concerning the lack of scientific men appointed as Trustees, and a Select Committee again examined the affairs of the British Museum in 1860.

The best account of the early development of the South Kensington estate remains The survey of London, xxxviii: The museums area of South Kensington (London, 1975), ch. 4.

ibid., 82–83 for four suggested plans of the layout.

Simcock A. V. , The Ashmolean Museum and Oxford science 1683–1983 (Oxford, 1984). For the original intentions of the building and its architecture, see Acland Henry W. and Ruskin John , The Oxford Museum (London, 1859), and Blau E. , Ruskinian Gothic: The architecture of Deane and Woodward 1845–1861 (New Jersey, 1982), ch. 3.

See plans in The Victoria history of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely, iii (London and Oxford, 1959), facing p. 274. Plans for building were first seriously mooted in 1853, but building did not start until 1863.

Alfred Waterhouse, Proposed Block Plan The Yorkshire College of Science, October 1877, Archives of the University of Leeds. Waterhouse's plans were shaped by the need to add buildings over a period of time as money became available. He therefore devised a series of linked irregularly shaped courts and quadrangles. The ‘Museums’ court was more triangular in shape, surrounded by physics and chemistry laboratories and lecture theatres, a geological lecture room, and arts rooms, linked by an internal corridor.

For a general outline, see Pevsner N. , A history of building types (London, 1976), ch. 8. This contains a number of plans showing different types.

Rupke Nicholaas A. , “The road to Albertopolis: Richard Owen (1804–92) and the founding of the British Museum of Natural History”, in Rupke N. A. (ed.), Science and the public good: Essays in honour of Margaret Gowing (London, 1988), 63–89.

The following account is based on information provided by Markus Thomas A. , to whom I am most grateful. See also his Buildings and power: Freedom and control in the origin of modern building types (London, 1993).

Discussed in Markus Thomas A. , “Domes of enlightenment: Two Scottish university museums”, Art history, viii (1985), 158–77.

Simcock A. V. , Robert T. Gunther and the Old Ashmolean (Oxford, 1985), 49. Until 1852, Richard Owen lived above the Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons, which allowed him to work through the night if need be: Desmond A. , Archetypes and ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London 1850–1875 (London, 1982), 22.

There was considerable discussion as to why there was no library planned in the new Natural History Museum building, see for example Nature, issues of 6 July 1871 and 2 May 1878; this is discussed in Stearn William T. , The Natural History Museum at South Kensington: A history of the British Museum (Natural History) 1753–1980 (London, 1981), 318–24.

ibid., 25.

Hudson K. , A social history of museums: What the visitors thought (London, 1975), ch. 1.

Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science (Devonshire Commission), 4th Report [c. 884] 1874, para. 19, reproduced in British Parliamentary papers: Education, scientific and technical, iii (Shannon, 1969).

Forbes Edward , “On the educational uses of museums (being the introductory lecture of the session 1853–1854)” (London, 1853), 9.

Survey of London (ref. 10), 65. Cole's 1865 report included a very detailed map of “access proposed to be afforded by the Metropolitan Railways to the South Kensington Museum and other public institutions”, 12th Report of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education (London, 1865).

Papworth J. W. and Papworth Wyatt , Museums, libraries and picture galleries, public and private: Their establishment, formation, arrangement and architectural construction, … (London, 1852).

At South Kensington opening hours were remarkably extended, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on three days a week, and from 10 a.m. to sunset on another three days: 11th report of the Science and Art Department (London, 1864), 141. On electric lighting, the Manchester Museum experimented with different sorts, using the dynamo in the physics laboratory at Owen's College, and settled on a mixture of incandescent lights and inverted arc lamps. The latter seems an odd choice as the carbon rods would need replacing frequently: Hoyle W. E. , “The electric light installation in the Manchester Museum”, Proceedings of the Museums Association (Sheffield, 1898), 95–105.

Nature, 13 June 1878, 170, and 20 June 1878, 194.

The most impressive is perhaps that of William MacGillivray who walked from Aberdeen to London in 1819 to see the bird collections of the British Museum, as recounted in Allen D. E. , The naturalist in Britain (Harmondsworth, 1978), 77–78. But similar stories were told nearly two generations later, for example by W. Boyd Dawkins about a mill-hand of Oldham: Nature, 7 June 1877, 98. See also Flower W. H. on “Boys’ museums”, in Essays on museums and other subjects connected with natural history (London, 1898), 63–69.

Forbes , op. cit. (ref. 24), 9. See also the correspondence in Nature relating to the memorial to the Government from the Royal Society of Arts on extending the usefulness of museums in manufacturing areas, such as the Bethnal Green Museum, which among other things “would be auxiliary in promoting morality and social good order”: Nature, 30 October 1873, 543–4.

See the discussion of Prince Albert's circle in Survey of London (ref. 10), 74–76.

Gooday G. , “The morals of energy metering: Constructing and deconstructing the precision of the Victorian electrical engineer's ammeter and voltmeter”, in Wise H. Norton (ed.), The values of precision (Princeton, forthcoming 1994).

For example, candle-making, printing, textile manufacture, glass-making, paper-making, to name a few; see Anderson R. G. W. , “‘What is technology?’: Education through museums in the mid-nineteenth century”, The British journal for the history of science, xxv (1992), 169–84.

A general plan of the university is given in Hartog P. L. (ed.), The Owen's College, Manchester (founded 1851): A brief history of the college and description of its various departments (Manchester, 1900). This also contains pictures of the museum.

Fraser Andrew G. , The building of Old College: Adam, Playfair and the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1989), 281–5, discusses the building of what was then called the Industrial Museum next to the University, linked by the “bridge of sighs”. Note however that the print of the projected museum in 1861 shown on p. 281 shows no sign of any bridge or link to the University. The museum indeed appears to rise solitary out of a virgin tract of land, and while there are a number of people shown, there is not even a sign of a street! Allan Douglas A. , The Royal Scottish Museum: Art & ethnography, natural history, technology, geology, 1854–1954 (Edinburgh, 1954), 54–55, contains plans of the museum and how it was extended. On South Kensington, see The survey of London (ref. 10), chs. 6 and 18, and Physick J. , The Victoria and Albert Museum: A history of its building (Oxford, 1982). There is a picture of the bridge on p. 151.

Anderson , op. cit. (ref. 33).

Physick , op. cit. (ref. 35), 147.

14th Report of the Science and Art Department (London, 1867), 232.

Fraser , op. cit. (ref. 35), 282.

The following account is based on Peponis J. and Hedin J. , “The layout of theories in the Natural History Museum”, 9H (London), iii, 21–25. For an analysis of techniques of spatial analysis, see Hillier B. and Hanson J. , The social logic of space (Cambridge, 1984). For an older but interesting study, see Lefebvre H. , The production of space (1974; first English transl., Oxford, 1991). He does not however mention museums.

Jevons , op. cit. (ref. 7), 61–62.

The museum of the Royal College of Surgeons is illustrated in Desmond, op. cit. (ref. 6), 253.

For the Jermyn Street Museum, see Survey of London, xxix, 272–4, for a description of the building, and xxx, 448, for plans and illustrations. The building was designed and built by Pennethorne James Sir 1846–49, but not fitted up and opened until 1851. Complete plans are in the archives of the British Geological Survey, GSM1/210–1. I am grateful to the archivist, Graham McKenna, for facilitating access to these plans.

Forbes , op. cit. (ref. 24), 12.

Discussed in more detail in Forgan S. , “The architecture of science and the idea of a university”, Studies in the history and philosophy of science, xx (1989), 405–34.

Jevons , op. cit. (ref. 7), 59–60.

Ibid.

Miers H. A. , “On the arrangement of the mineral collection in the University Museum, Oxford”, Proceedings of the Museums Association (Oxford, 1897), 37–46.

Forbes , op. cit. (ref. 24), 11.

For example, Nature, 16 March 1871, 381 (“copious legible descriptive labels”); 23 March 1871, 401 (“display in glass cases … accompanied by explanatory notes and diagrams”); 11 December 1873, 114, contrasted the South Kensington museums where “no object is without a label”, with the British Museum and others that imitated its scientific character, with “vast numbers of useful specimens buried in drawers and cases, adorned with Latin labels”; or 21 June 1877, 140, letter on Museum Reform from Rudler F. W. , “A curator can therefore hardly be too free in the use of descriptive labels”. Flower W. H. , “Museum organization”, Presidential Address to the British Association 1889, published in Essays on museums (ref. 29), called for guide-books and catalogues, but as adjuncts, rather than superseding the use of proper labels, p. 19.

Forbes , op. cit. (ref. 23), 14.

Devonshire Commission, Fourth report, 1874, para. 135, p. 19.

The museums journal, ii/10 (April 1903), 288. The Museums Association established a Committee on Labelling in Museums in 1890. This produced a specimen label which had 31 lines of text describing the order of rodents, so visitor stamina permitting, perhaps such faith was justified; see Lewis G. , For instruction and recreation: A centenary history of the Museums Association (London, 1989), 15–16.

Miers , op. cit. (ref. 47), especially pp. 39–44.

Girouard M. , Alfred Waterhouse and the Natural History Museum (London, 1981), gives an account and plans of the building, and see Stearn , op. cit. (ref. 20), ch. 5. See also the proposals by Flower W. H. in “Modern museums” (1893), in op. cit. (ref. 29), 49–52.

The Devonshire Commission recommended that such a system should receive careful consideration when the fittings were planned: Fourth report, 1874, para. 19, p. 4.

Illustrated in Stearn, op. cit. (ref. 20), endpapers and Fig. 7.

van Keuran David K. , “Museums and ideology: Augustus Pitt-Rivers, anthropological museums, and social change in later Victorian Britain”, Victorian studies, autumn 1984, 171–89.

The Devonshire Commission were quite clear that the exhibition displays at the proposed new Natural History Museum should be of a “Selection of typical specimens”, Fourth report, para. 20, p. 4.

On changed teaching regimes in later Victorian Britain, see Gooday G. , “Teaching telegraphy and electrotechnics in the physics laboratory: William Ayrton and the creation of an academic space for electrical engineering 1873–84”, History of technology, xiii (1991), 73–114. Also, Marsden B. , “Engineering science in Glasgow: Economy, efficiency and measurement as prime movers in the differentiation of an academic discipline”, The British journal for the history of science, xxv (1992), 319–46.

Hearnshaw F. J. C. , The centenary history of King's College London 1828–1928 (London, 1929), 148–9.

Ibid., 290. Bowers B. , Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS 1802–1875 (London, 1975), 59–60, asserts that contrary to popular belief, Wheatstone must have done some teaching throughout his long professorship, as the Engineering Course continued to be taught. Only Wheatstone could have taught the electrical parts of that course, and he must have used much of his own apparatus. But there is also the implication at least that he and the other scientific professors drew on the Museum's resources in a reference in the College Minutes to Room 42, the Professor's laboratory “very conveniently situated, next to the Students’ Laboratory on one side, and to the Engineering Museum on the other. Both doors of communication already exist.”, King's College London Archives, Council Minutes, vol. K, KA/C/1710, 8 May 1868, 287. The whole suite of rooms was situated to the left of the famous chapel on the first floor of the building.

Schaffer S. , “Machine philosophy and its audiences in Georgian England (the public perception of experiment)” (unpublished paper, British-North American Joint Meeting, Toronto, July 1992).

Report to the Syndicate, 31 December 1853, quoted in Willis Robert and Clark John Willis , The architectural history of the University of Cambridge (1886; repr. Cambridge, 1988), 162.

Altick , op. cit. (ref. 3), 377–81.

Devonshire Commission, Fourth report, 1874, Section VII, 18–22, summarizes the very considerable amount of evidence taken on “Public lectures in connexion with Museums”.

Pictured in the Illustrated London news, with Richard Owen lecturing. The theatre was large, horseshoe-shaped and sunk through two floors. There was separate access for the lecturer from an adjoining lecturer's room, while the public entered from the “hall of marbles” at the level of the top row of seats.

See plans for both Fowke's design (1864) and Waterhouse's first design (1870–71) in Girouard, op. cit. (ref. 54), 28–29.

The first lecture theatre in the “Junction building” was designed and built by Sir James Pennethorne in 1856/57. This was demolished in Fowke's second stage of building and was replaced by a showpiece, highly decorated theatre fronting onto an internal court and garden: Physick, op. cit. (ref. 35), chs. 7–8. The public were admitted to the School of Naval Architecture lectures on payment of a fee: Merrifield Charles W. , “Address delivered at the opening of the Royal School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, at South Kensington, on the 1st of November 1864” (Department of Science and Art, London, 1864), 2.

Devonshire Commission, Minutes of evidence [c. 536], 1872, xxv, qu. 7775, British Parliamentary papers, education: Scientific & technical, ii.

Devonshire Commission, Fourth report, 1874, para. 122, p. 18.

Forgan , op. cit. (ref. 44), 419–22. Nature did however run a couple of reports on the utilization of natural history museums in Germany for scientific instruction: 6 and 13 April 1871, 441, 462–3. The writer however noted that the privatdozent, who did most of the teaching, depended on professorial favour for access to the museum collections, and tended to select subjects for lectures which did not necessarily require recourse to collections.

12th report of the Department of Science and Art (London, 1865), 278, included details of Cole and Fowke's visit to the Conservatoire, and emphasized the three factors they found most attractive: (i) public exhibition of machinery, manufactures and models, (ii) a scientific library open to all, and (iii) free evening lectures given by eminent professors. See also the Devonshire Commission, Fourth report, 1874, 32–44 for Appendix III, Extract from Mr. Lockyer's report on the aid given by the state to science in France. This gave considerable detail on the Conservatoire in particular.

ibid., as seen in Lockyer's Report.

Devonshire Commission, Fourth report, 1874, para. 122–6. Flower clearly felt deeply attached to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons and the “museum-lectures” [sic] that his tenure of the Hunterian professorship obliged him to undertake. As he said in his introductory lecture to the course of comparative anatomy in 1870, “I shall, therefore, perhaps more than another might, speak to you directly from those specimens. I am, as it were, their mouthpiece’: Essays on museums (ref. 29), 97.

Devonshire Commission, Fourth report, 1874, para. 127–30. See the evidence of the British Museum keepers, Sclater P. (zoology) Waterhouse G. (geology), and Maskelyne M. H. N. (mineralogy). See also The museums journal, ii/10 (April 1903), 287–8.

Schaffer S. , “The eighteenth Brumaire of Bruno Latour”, Studies in the history and philosophy of science, xxii (1991), 174–92.

Jevons , op. cit. (ref. 7), 55.

Miers , op. cit. (ref. 47), 37.

See for example the Remarks listed in the Statistical Appendix of Miers Henry Sir , A report on the public museums of the British Isles (other than the national museums) to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees (Edinburgh, 1928). Hartley University College Department Museum (Southampton) was “intended for the use of students, but may be seen by special arrangement” (p. 165), as were those of Sheffield University (p. 163). At Cambridge, the Botanical Museum was open but is “primarily for use in the university department” (p. 100). The Geological and Mineralogical Collections were noted as departmental museums under the charge of the professor. Zoology and comparative anatomy were more overtly discouraging: “While the public is at all times admitted, the collections are arranged with a view to the work of the students in the university” (p. 101).

Nature, 1 May 1873, 5. Wallace was always particularly critical of the tendency to build temples and palaces, when what museums needed were small rooms for proper display and study. See his “Museums for the people”, in Studies, scientific and social, ii (London, 1900).

Robins E. C. , Technical school and college building (London, 1887), 133.

“The laboratory in modern science”, Science, iii/64 (1884), 122–4.

Lodge Oliver , “The ideal physical laboratory for a college”, The electrician, 14 Nov. 1890, 32–33, and also 21 Nov. 1890, 66–68.

The word ‘turnstile’ goes back to the seventeenth century, but iron turnstiles appear to have become widespread during the course of the nineteenth century, generally as an auxiliary to issuing tickets at such places as exhibitions and railway stations. They were certainly in evidence at South Kensington in the 1870s and 1880s, as seen in the mention by Jevons (ref. 46).

Alfred Lord Tennyson: A memoir by his son (London, 1897), ii, 413.

IGS Archives, GSM 1/204. I am grateful to John Thackray for this reference and for allowing me to use his unpublished paper on “‘An experiment in popular education’: The Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street”.